MEEK: Like it or not, Harper is the transformational leader

President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks at the election night party at McCormick Place on Wednesday in Chicago. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

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JIM MEEK

Watching Barack Obama’s victory speech at 3 a.m. Wednesday was like watching Bambi’s mother die in the Disney movie when my kids were still kids.

Both times I was moved to tears, but I couldn’t figure out why in the morning.

A couple of days after Obama’s speech, it struck me that he sounded the way certain Canadian politicians — the Liberal sort — used to sound. (Except we’ve never had an orator of Obama’s rank and quality.)

The president’s theme, overall, was one Pierre Trudeau defined 40 years ago as the “just society”: Inclusiveness will triumph over special interest; individualism will be tempered by caring; equality of opportunity will trump elitism; the income gap must be bridged; and the future is ours.

Obama steps out of the realm of Canadian values, mind you, to affirm America’s manifest destiny. “What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny is shared, that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations ...”

The words gain their power from Obama’s delivery, and you should watch the video if you missed the live performance. Then take a look at his 2008 victory speech and tell me you’re not trapped in a time loop.

The president was a symbol of hope then, and remains one now. But he has yet to fully deliver on the promise of hope. Four years later, too many black men still go to prison; too many Americans (and Canadians) work hard to stay poor; and the economy has not delivered equality of opportunity any more than it has ceased to confer advantage on people who know how to move money around.

Obama remains an inspirational leader, but he is not yet a transformational one.

A disclaimer here: I am not enlisting in the ranks of angry old white men who argue Obama didn’t get a damned thing done in his first term in office. Inside a political system characterized by partisan paralysis, the president accomplished the unlikely by keeping the economy from plummeting into full recession; the unanticipated by tracking down Osama bin Laden; and the unimaginable by introducing Obama-care. (For a fuller list of accomplishments, see the New Yorker’s Obama endorsement.

Asking for more is asking too much, for Obama leads a divided country; and despite the can-do optimism his speeches generate, let’s remember that the president barely topped Mitt Romney in the popular vote on Tuesday.

Romney’s Republicans got so trapped in the politics of division and exclusion that they failed to articulate the national vision implicit in the 49 per cent vote for Mitt. In that America, individualism is more rugged; compassion is vested in the community, church and family rather than the state; criminals are punished, not pampered; government gets out of the way of economic development; and the elimination of “entitlements” feeds the sacred fires of personal ambition and national competitiveness.

In short, what Mitt Romney failed to articulate was Stephen Harper’s vision for Canada. That Harper has largely declined to articulate it himself speaks to his superb strategic instinct. The prime minister knows he can’t transform Canada too quickly, or sound too inspirational about it. (That would only enrage Canadians who don’t share his values — most of them, I’d wager.)

Harper has transformed Canadian society by keeping the conversation in his comfort zones — the economy and crime — while turning down the volume on noisy chatter about health care and equalization.

One mark of Harper’s accomplishment is the current agenda of the social democrats that run Nova Scotia’s government under an NDP banner. In a Conservative Canada, it has to be all about the economy, stupid. And so our province did its best this week to celebrate the wooing and winning of an engineering firm based in Calgary, and a technology giant based in Armonk, N.Y.

In short, President Obama proves a leader can be inspirational without being transformational, while Prime Minister Harper goes about his task of transforming Canada without inspiring it. Obama’s the braver man. Harper’s more coldly competent.

Jim Meek is a Halifax-based freelance writer and a principal of Public Affairs Atlantic Inc.